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Tuesday, 22 March 2016

The Unusual Suspects: Restoring pre-owned Citadel Miniatures

With the Easter holidays fast approaching, it is nice to be able to plan out some welcome hobby projects. I have already based up some choice units for the Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers (more about them soon) and my McDeath project remains an ongoing concern.

But before I dive into those, I want to take a look at the humble battered Citadel figure - very much like the five you can see here today. It seems to me that a great deal of effort is put into the acquisition of near mint lead. I hear talk of 'perfect castings' and 'never painted' all of the time. I am sure that many collectors get a great deal of satisfaction from locating desirable miniatures in mint and near-mint condition.

Collecting things is a buzz after all. And I can honestly say that I have been guilty once or twice in the past of focusing a little too much on the rare or pristine stuff, especially when you consider that most classic Warhammer figures are in a pretty shoddy state indeed. Dented, squashed and hideously painted - models like this must exist everywhere and it seems for many, just not worth the effort to strip and reuse. They reside, like forgotten children, at the bottom of every grognard's leadpile - ignored and unloved.

I adore restoring them. Cleaning away the years of abuse, tending to their damaged limbs or weapons and finally painting them up so once again, they can be part of a display or game. Over the next few posts, I will be chronicling my efforts to breathe new life into these battered models. By Sunday, I hope to have all five of these models complete and ready for the table top.

An early Easter painting challenge if you will. But first, to strip them of decades of decadence and remove all of that clinging paint.

7 comments:

A noble pursuit my friend - poor neglected minis like this have languished long enough in the recesses of lofts and bits boxes. Look forward to seeing them all spruced up.

In a similar vein - I recently purchased a large box of ancient Grenadier minis from a certain Mr Casey - there's a few gems in there but lots I would be personally tempted to neglect. However, there is a such a range of characters, monsters and warriors that I feel there must be a self contained scenario or scenarios in there waiting to get out once I've painted them all up - expect a blog post some time soon(ish)...

Oooh! Grenadier minis! I have a small collection of mid '80s monsters somewhere and they are heavy! I swear they must have used far more lead than Citadel did back then!! Funny you should mention that Mr.Casey. The battered minis you see here also came from him!

I share a similar enjoyment of rescuing the unloved and bringing them to life once more. Apart from the obvious financial benefits compared to minis in good condition their is also much less reticence at converting something already damaged.

I am also working on several units for my Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers project. One was badly broken so served as a conversion. As you have said, old broken minis can be reborn with a little conversion work!